Saturday, April 28, 2012

The anti-Islamization activist Josep Anglada is said by some to be the Tommy Robinson — or even the Geert Wilders — of Spain.

Strictly speaking, we should say “of Catalonia”, since Mr. Anglada speaks on behalf of a Catalonian political party to a Catalonian audience in the Catalan language. Catalonia has an Iberian culture, and its language is understandable to natives of other Spanish regions, but it is as ethnically distinct as Portugal.

The video below shows excerpts from a speech given by Josep Anglada of Plataforma per Catalunya (Platform for Catalonia) just before the Spanish general elections, November 10, 2011. The party received 59,781 votes.

Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Humm.Catalonina is difficult or understand by spanish and portuguese. The closest language would be Provençal (the same language for a long long time(spoken in the lower half of France untill the XIX century(the french destroyed it).

What exactly constitutes as natives? According to the latest genetic research, Spaniards are largely a Mediterranean people who have seen some admixture from various invaders including Celts, Romans, Germanic tribes and North African Berbers.

I think largely the usage of term native is somewhat flawed. The agreeance upon a univeral language and culture that exists within Spain, is however unquestionable in my mind. Although im sure this will obviously be the backbone of his message, I still feel the whole indiginous argument does more harm than good, especially seen as when you really get down to it, it would be near impossible to find a nation built upon solely the genetics from one particular tribe.

Identity is a tricky subject. For example is the third generation North African considered truly Spanish? Or the second generation child of an ex pat Brit? Or is one considered indigenous,once all traces of what was not spanish has dissapeared?

Unfortunately this is not the sole question being asked. Unfortunately the questions being asked are, why is the muslim population not integrating, not embracing the Spanish culture, and infact hostile towards it...

Babs: No he did not lost, in a way. The 59,781 votes refer only to Catalonia. Their best results so far, and growing. And now their plan is to extend to other parts of Spain. My next article will be dealing with this.

I recall one of the predicted outcomes of forcing Europe into the EU straitjacket was that national political groups would be fractured and replaced by ethnic political orientations as the nation-state lots its perceived uniting power over those local groups. Bretons, Scots, Catalan, the various German groups are all starting to become more visible. Hell even Occitans seem to be making a bit of an appearance.

It seems this was both encouraged by the EU's progeniters and, at the same time, treated as a contingency to be ultimately overcome: they wanted to do away with the Westphalian national legacy of Europe and the best short-term way to do that initially is to fracture them along ethnic lines, as we see in places like Spain, Italy and to a lesser extent France, which earlier in history managed to successfully suppress most of its non-parisienne ethnic groups through a sustained campaign of low-level ethnic cleansing (mroe like ethnic varnishing, as they're still there, but try to hide behind a shiny French shell). Some nations are hard to fracture (Denmark, Sweden, England to name but three) as they're ethnically and culturally homogeneous. The solution would be to introduce new ethnic groups into those nations to artificially create the same tensions for ethnic division.

The longer-term plan is to presumably squash these ethnic divisions once again by creating new ethnically heterogeneous "regions". In England, about a decade back, there was a furore over the creation of "regional parliaments", useless talking shops that only added extra layers of remoteness to the government, with the unstated goal of dividing England up into five distinct, competing regions (and Scotland into two more on top). These regions were designed to form the basic administrative units of the EU at some future date.

It's not working quite how they wanted it to work, I suspect, but they're pressing ahead with similar plans all the time, trying to break the link between nation and people and create geographically nonsensical "regions" for that purpose.

I support the right of a people to determine their own future. I am, however, wary of what brought the current self-determination drives about. It's entirely possible that groups such as this will find some way to gain independence, only to be bounced into becoming part of the EU and losing it all over again. Scotland is in severe danger of that very thing with Salmond at the helm - he's stated he wants Scottish independence within the EU, which is a bit of a contradiction in terms to say the least - andI worry that other independence movements are also being lead by EUphiles like him.

Yes, every nation of which I am aware has experienced some admixture of foreigners in the past, but that does not mean that the Spanish people, or any other European group such as the English or the French, are a "mongrel" race with no identity or land of their own.

The English, for instance, have been romanticized by Arnold amongst others as a blend of Celtic and Germanic genes resulting from the early middle-ages conquest of Britain by the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons; yet recent studies have shown that the majority of English can trace their roots back 15,000 years, with subsequent Roman, German, and Norman invasions having much more consequence culturally than genetically (Oppenheimer, "Origins of the British" 2006).

A British expat will therefore differ genetically from the majority of Spaniards, regardless of how well she adapts to Spanish culture. Though of course the difference would not be so great as the people who came to inhabit the British isles probably originated in Iberia.

Now by this I mean neither that natives should shut themselves off from outsiders nor that they should discriminate against "others" who come and adapt to their culture. Rather, I mean that we should respect the rights of native people, wherever they be, to cultural and ethnic self-determination in the areas they have inhabited for millennia.

But then again in response to my own post. One only has to look at ww2 when american soldiers were made up of Italian, german and Japanese Americans that fought for America against their ancestral homelands. This would suggest race is potentially irrelevant when it comes to assimilation.

Granted the conception and development of the states is so different to Europe, but it suggests one could be say Be an Italian American or even say Asian British and still be a fully integrated Brit. But that added label would suggest non native status and perhaps even an example that one is not truly part of society. For example when do you hear the terms Dutch American or german American or English American. Those with said ancestry are merely American, yet Italians, Irish, blacks mexicans etc have a separate status.

I'm perhaps getting off point here and find myself not really coming to any particular conclusion. Will leave it there

All it says on Wikipedia is that this party is widely regarded as xenophobic and racist, with Nazi links. The party's site does not immediately hit the viewer with Catalan, Spanish and English statements about these important questions. I am concerned about ISLAMISM, ie growing theocratic, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-kuffar trends. I don't care about people's melanin levels. I will never support racism. I do think that native cultures, including European ones, should be protected, and that every country should think very carefully about what immigrants it really needs, on economic and cultural terms. But not because of fears about genetic variations. And I'm glad to say so on this site, knowing that people who think we are a bunch of racists are checking it out. Maybe they do support the sexism and homophobia of islam - it certainly seems that way.

I'd treat the results of genetic studies of European origins with some caution. For example, the question as to whether farming was introduced to Europe by immigration or cultural diffusion is still not settled as different DNA analyses have produced conflicting results.

(I've been informed by a native Spanish speaker that she definitely couldn't understand Catalan).